ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Three nations, three ways to recycle plastic waste with nuclear technology
Plastic waste pollutes oceans, streams, and bloodstreams. Nations in Asia and the Pacific are working with the International Atomic Energy Agency through the Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics) initiative to tackle the problem. Launched in 2020, NUTEC Plastics is focused on using nuclear technology to both track the flow of microplastics and improve upstream plastic recycling before discarded plastic can enter the ecosystem. Irradiation could target hard-to-recycle plastics and the development of bio-based plastics, offering sustainable alternatives to conventional plastic products and building a “circular economy” for plastics, according to the IAEA.
Wayne A. Houlberg, Robert W. Conn
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 64 | Number 1 | September 1977 | Pages 141-150
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27085
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Research on the development of numerical techniques to simulate the space-time evolution of large tokamak plasmas is reported. A nonuniform spatial mesh technique is employed to allow more accurate calculations in the boundary of reactor-size plasmas. A box integration method is used to maintain the accuracy of central differencing on the nonuniform spatial mesh and to preserve both the particle and energy flux. A variable implicit technique is used for the time expansion. The time-centered (Crank-Nicholson) technique used in most other models generally offers greater accuracy but can lead to severe limitations on the time step. Somewhat more implicit treatments can remove the numerical limitations on the time step without seriously affecting accuracy. The physical time scales, which can change by several orders of magnitude from startup to equilibrium, can then be used to continually adjust the time step throughout a calculation. Sample calculations are presented for a near-term tokamak engineering test reactor and a conceptual tokamak power reactor, UWMAK-III.